Desired learning outcomes for the curricula in financial services industry as perceived by professionals in the financial services industry located in the Greater Toronto Area /

This study sought to explore the changing nature of the financial services industry in Toronto, Canada and the impact that these changes will have on the vocational educational outcomes required by Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAAT) graduates who wish to enter the financial services industry. The study was descriptive and exploratory, based on both quantitative and qualitative data. Triangulation of 3 data sources (a collection of newspaper articles from the Toronto Star between July 1999 and June 2000, the calendars of the 25 CAATs, and a survey questionnaire prepared by me and distributed to subject matter experts who are key practitioners in the financial services industry) was used. The study contains a discussion of how the financial services industry is changing. The first question to be answered was: What do current practitioners in financial services perceive to be the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will be required of future graduates for employment within the financial services industry? The study found that Ontario CAAT's graduates entering the financial services field need both business and financial services vocational learning outcomes. Colleges should have 2 programs 1 in accounting and 1 in financial services. The report addresses which specific topics should be included in the financial services program. The second question to be answered was: How does this anticipated profile of knowledge, skills, and attitudes change depending on the degree of implementation of the new technologies by the survey respondent? The study found no pattern. The third question to be answered was: In what way do existing programs need to change in the area of accreditation as perceived by the respondents? The study found that for accreditation, 3 credentials should be addressed within the financial services program. These are the Canadian Securities, the Life Underwriters, and the Certified Financial Planner designations. The last question to be answered was: What new knowledge, skills, and attitudes need to be incorporated into college curricula to address changing needs in the employment sector? For each Ontario CAAT which has a financial services program (excluding accounting), their program was reviewed in light of the topics as perceived by professionals in the financial services industry.

Understanding the financial status of a group of high performance athletes

With the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games quickly approaching, there has been a heightened interest in the performance of Canadian athletes at international competitions (Duffy, 2007; Fidlin, 2005; Longley, 2006). Two significant documents outline Canada's goal to become the number one sporting nation at the 2010 Olympic Games, and improve Canada's performance at the 2008 Olympic Games: Own the Podium and Road to Excellence (Priestner Allinger & Allinger, 2004; Road to Excellence, 2006). These two documents represent heightened interest in the performance of our elite athletes, in conjunction with Canada's hosting status of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The requirements to train and compete at the international level have become more demanding both in terms of financial resources and time commitment. The need to financially assist athletes with their training and competition costs has been an important topic of debate over the past decades (Beamish & Borowy, 1987; Gatehouse, 2004; Macintosh, 1996; Munro, 1970; Owens, 2004). Two sources of fiinding for high performance athletes in Canada are the Athlete Assistance Program (AAP) provided by the Federal Government and the Canadian Olympic Excellence Fund provided by the Canadian Olympic Committee. The importance of these fiinds for athletes has been discussed in various forums (Ekos, 1992, 1997, 2005; Priestner Allinger & Allinger, 2004; Thibault «& Babiak, 2005). However, alternative sources of funds for high performance athletes have never been the object of research. As such the purpose of this study was to describe a group of athlete applicants from the time period of November 2004 to April 2006, and to contextualize these applications within the development of the Charitable Fund for Athletes.

Canada/U.S. border crossing: facilitation and constraint

Abstract The aim of this research project is to draw on accounts of experiences ofborder crossing and regulation at the Canada/U.S. border at Niagara in order to illuminate the dynamics of differentiation and inequality at this site. The research is informed by claims that the world is turning into a global village due to transnational flows oftechnology, infonnation, capital and people. Much of the available literature on globalization shows that while the transfer of technology, information, and capital are enhanced, the transnational movement of people is both facilitated and constrained in complex and unequal ways. In this project, the workings of facilitation and constraint were explored through an analysis often interviews with people who had spent a substantial portion oftheir childhood (e.g. 5 years) in a Canadian border community. The interviewees were at the time ofthe research between the ages of 19 and 25. Because most ofthe respondents were 'white' Canadians of working to upper middle class status, my focus was to explore how 'whiteness' as privilege may translate into enhanced movement across borders and how 'white' people may internalize and enjoy this privilege but may often deny its reality. I was also interested in how inequality is perceived, understood, and legitimated by these relatively privileged people. My analysis ofthe ten accounts ofborder crossing and regulation suggests that differentially situated people experience border crossing differently. An important finding is that while relatively privileged border crossers perceived and often problernatized differential treatment based on external factors such as physical appearance, and especially race, most did not challenge such treatment but rather saw it as acceptable. These findings are located within newer literature that addresses the increasing securitization ofborders and migration in western societies.

Region Connection Calculus: Composition Tables and Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) is an important field of AI that deals with qualitative aspects of spatial entities. Regions and their relationships are described in qualitative terms instead of numerical values. This approach models human based reasoning about such entities closer than other approaches. Any relationships between regions that we encounter in our daily life situations are normally formulated in natural language. For example, one can outline one's room plan to an expert by indicating which rooms should be connected to each other. Mereotopology as an area of QSR combines mereology, topology and algebraic methods. As mereotopology plays an important role in region based theories of space, our focus is on one of the most widely referenced formalisms for QSR, the region connection calculus (RCC). RCC is a first order theory based on a primitive connectedness relation, which is a binary symmetric relation satisfying some additional properties. By using this relation we can define a set of basic binary relations which have the property of being jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint (JEPD), which means that between any two spatial entities exactly one of the basic relations hold. Basic reasoning can now be done by using the composition operation on relations whose results are stored in a composition table. Relation algebras (RAs) have become a main entity for spatial reasoning in the area of QSR. These algebras are based on equational reasoning which can be used to derive further relations between regions in a certain situation. Any of those algebras describe the relation between regions up to a certain degree of detail. In this thesis we will use the method of splitting atoms in a RA in order to reproduce known algebras such as RCC15 and RCC25 systematically and to generate new algebras, and hence a more detailed description of regions, beyond RCC25.

DONATION DECISIONS: THE ROLES OF FINANCIAL AND EMOTIONAL INFORMATION

This paper investigates the impact of personal affinity toward a charity and information regarding financial management of potential recipient charitable organizations on decisions to donate. Using an experiment, the study examines how personal donation decisions differ from corporate donation decisions made by managers and how the emotional intelligence of donors affects donation decisions. The results indicate that threshold and financial information on charities assembled by the Better Business Bureau, a charity rating agency, made a significant impact on corporate donation decisions. The study also shows that emotional intelligence plays an important role that aids both individual donors and managers to regulate their donation decisions.

Long Point Company financial memorandum

Long Point Company financial memorandum (1 page, printed). A large portion of this page has been torn off. A good portion of the text is affected, May 1881.